Offender
Profiling Series
Interviewing and Deception
Edited by David Canter & Laurence Alison
(1999)
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& Deception
Interviewing and Deception
David Canter & Laurence Alison
Interviewing and Deception
Investigative or police decision making involves
the identification of and choice between options from amongst a number
of different possible lines of enquiry. We argue that this iterative
process or feedback loop, the 'Investigative Cycle', involves three
continuous processes: information collection, investigative inferences
and the implementation of investigative actions. Within this cycle we
identify a sequence of four stages of potential distortion in information
processing: the collection, examination, evaluation and utilisation
stages. These distortions include cognitive, presentational, social
and pragmatic components. We argue that errors at any of these stages
will profoundly effect the other two processes in the investigative
cycle. The identification of these cycles, stages and types of distortion
allow for the development of a more systematic approach to uncovering
where potential weaknesses in an enquiry may evolve.
